Look up Bill Willinghams bio on his website billwillingham.com or elsewhere and theres an entertaining story or two, and a few facts, but readers know him as the writer behind Fables, one of the best comics on the Twenty-first century, which just celebrated a decade of publication. Willingham has had a long history as a writer and artist. He was a staff artist at TSR, he drew the famous Alan Moore-written short comic In Darkest Night, and was responsible for many comics including Elementals, Pantheon, Proposition Player and Jack of Fables. Hes also written the novels Peter and Max and Down the Mysterly River.
Fables, which explores what happened when characters from fairy tales escape their worlds to find refugee in ours has changed over the years, but its still an action-packed character study where no one and nothing is safe. Last year a new spin-off series Fairest was launched, which like Fables comes out monthly from Vertigo Comics. Willingham is also overseeing FablesCon, which takes place in Rochester, Minnesota March 22-24, a convention celebrating Fables and mythic fiction, which features a great lineup of creators and a talent contest for a new Fables artist, but he took time out to talk with us about his many projects.
ALEX DUEBEN: Bill, thanks for talking with us. I know this is a busy time between work and planning for FablesCon.
BILL WILLINGHAM: This is the last big month before FablesCon in which every single thing that can possibly go wrong is scheduled to go wrong, so well see how that works out.
AD: At least youve scheduled for that.
BW: Ive seen other people run conventions and they have to know its coming. They have to know that the sky will be falling, so why not allow for it?
AD: Why dont we start there. March 22-24 youre holding FablesCon, which celebrates mythic fiction. Talk a little about what mythic fiction is and what the convention is.
BW: In the search for a title to describe what I had in mind about these kinds of books, Kurt Busiek came up with mythic fiction, which I think is as good a title as one can hope for. First of all, what its not: Its not crime noir, its not war stories, its not superheroes, its not really high fantasy, although it could be, and its not science fiction, although it could be. Its Fables and Sandman and so much that has come before. I think Cerebus from a long time ago would have fallen into that category. Its talking animals and mice with swords. Its literary characters having new adventures especially when literary characters cross into other books and worlds. I think all of that qualifies as a part of the mythic fiction realm. Fables, fairy tales, folklore, legends, mythology are good playgrounds in which mythic fiction does well.
AD: The convention has a great guest list, much of the Fables team in addition to lots of other people.
BW: We didnt want to make it just a Fables convention, although theres been some movement to have something like that, but a convention about these types of books. Not only the ones Im involved with but the ones I love reading. And the guest list shows that. Were small. This is our first year, so we could not have the totally exhaustive guest list that we might have liked but I think weve done pretty good. And were going to have lots of interesting conversations about the types of books we love.
AD: And you brought all these people to Minnesota in March, which Im sure is not the easiest sell.
BW: Its not an easy sell, but Im happily surprised. We did better than some might have predicted. March in Minnesota can still be winter. This weekend were scheduled to get some more snow. I hope the city is festooned with snow when we do this because we do well transporting people through snow. Were expert at it. Also between the hotel and the convention center, there are skyways and underground ways, the whole Mayo Convention Center complex has hidden and not so hidden ways so you can do this convention and never have to leave the warm confines of the inside if you choose to do so. What better way to have a winter convention than one where youre out of the elements.
AD: I want to talk about Fables, but the most recent trade just came out so I dont want to spoil anything if people havent picked it up yet. The title, though, Cubs in Toyland, sounds like such a nice sweet G-rated story, but its really not.
BW: Which was the whole point. We went, what is the happiest title we could possibly have in Fables? Anything in Toyland just sounds happy on the face of it, so to go against that we decided well then under that rubric lets have the most dire story we can think of and we did. I think we succeeded quite well in coming up with a perfectly terriblenot terrible in terms of badly done but in terms of consequence and importstory for these kids that ended up going to Toyland. Im pretty happy with the outcome, although thismore than any other storyright up until that last moment of the next to last issue, we asked ourselves, do we dare do this? Apparently we did.
AD: Not to give anything away to those who havent read it, but it was possibly the most intense and dire arc of Fables, which says something.
BW: Well I dont want readers to be un-moved. I can handle readers being mad at me; thats happened before. I can handle readers loving what weve done; thats happened from time to time and Im very grateful for it. But the one thing I cannot abide is reader indifference. Not leaving the readers moved in any way at the end of it is an absolute crime. Now if you can bring hilarious comedy every time and leave the readers moved and emotionally engaged, great, but comedys hard. Tragedy is not much easier, but everyone knows how to do tragedy. Everyone knows what would be tragic in their own lives. So we went that route.
AD: In those issues of the monthly series, there were Oz backups stories, which were drawn by Shawn McManus. I wasnt expecting you to tackle Oz because I dont think of them as being public domain.
BW: It doesnt seem like Oz should be public domain, should it? And yet they are. Thats why we were able to use Oz. I knew for a fact that Cubs in Toyland was going to be this really grim story so we wanted something lighthearted to kind of cleanse the palate between servings of this barbed wire and razor blades that were dishing up to people. So Bufkin the silly monkey and Oz seemed the perfect way to do that. Even though that got a little bit dark here and there but in comparison to Toyland, not at all.
AD: Just before Christmas you published the graphic novel Werewolves of the Heartland, which was a great story and set in Iowa. You dont find many comics set on the great plains.
BW: No. I had the title Werewolves of the Heartland for a while. I just liked the way it sounded. While I was pondering doing that book, I was moving from Las Vegas, Nevada to Minnesota and I passed Story City, Iowa on the road and I couldnt not stop. I mean if you see a sign for something called Story City and youre in my business, youre going to stop. I had lunch there. It was this charming little town and thats when it gelled for me. If Werewolves of the Heartland was going to take place anywhere, it was going to take place in Story City. I took lots of pictures, looked up everything I could about Story City and set it there. I did not let anyone in Story City know that this was happening. I did not ask anyones permission. Im not sure how you would go about doing that: Look, Im going to substitute all you kind people with ravening werewolves and then mostly destroy the town. What do you think about that? We just went ahead and did. I have not since heard if anyone in Story City has noticed what I did. At some point when I have timeand thats a premium thing right nowbut at some point Im going to drive down there again, its a two-three hour drive, and strategically happen to forget copies here and there at the local diner and library and places like that. Story City, Iowa. Beautiful town. Everyone should go there. It is not actually populated with werewolves, but other than that, the book was entirely accurate.
AD: Well see if we can get a plaque in town: This building was destroyed by Bigby in Werewolves of the Heartland.
BW: If you take the Dashiell Hammett tour in San Francisco it ends up in the alley in which Brigid OShaughnessy shot Miles Archer and they have a plaque there. The city put a plaque in that very alley a brass plaque that says on this spot Brigid OShaughnessy shot Miles Archer and they dont explain it was in a book. They just say that Brigid OShaughnessy shot Miles Archer there. I love that. I would the crowning joy of my life would be to have some kind of location call out like that where its not explained. Its so much of San Francisco culture that I guess they just didnt feel the ned to explain it. Thats true immortality.
AD: That is pretty awesome. Last year you also launched Fairest, which is more of a showcase for other writers and artists where youre just popping in now and again. Is that how it was designed?
BW: Thats sort of official in the sense that between these longer arcs of five-six issues per guest writeralthough I guess the whole point of Fairest is to have different writers so you wouldnt really call them guests. In any case DC wants to be able to put my name on every collection so Im going to do a one issue story in between every one of the longer arcs just so that we can get away with that. I dont think its really getting away with something; its certainly a joy to do. But were going to do that so I keep my hand in that little corner of the vast Fables world from time to time.
AD: What other creators are working on the book in future arcs?
BW: The very next one were going to see is Sean Williams, who is a fellow from Hollywood. He ran a production company for many years and has finally washed his hands of Hollywood and hes doing a story set in the Indu which is the fairy tale Fables version of India and introducing a new fairest in that land from Indian legend. That is a six issue I believe. Following that we are probably the scheduling could go one way or another, but were probably having the return of Cinderella with Shawn McManus drawing and Marc Andreyko writing. He came up with this wonderful caper for Cinderella that the thing to do with Cinderella is to do stories that only she could be involved in and he came up with a wonderful one for that. At some point down the road we have Matt Sturges doing Maddie the Cat, the Fairest female sorcerer cat of all the female sorcerer cats of the world. She is in cat form now but she was Medea from Greek myth who the witch Sycorax from The Tempest was based upon so shes that witch as well. But now shes a cat and apparently a pretty attractive one. Well see whats up with her.
AD: Glad to hear that Matt is doing something for the book. I loved Jack of Fables that the two of you wrote together.
BW: Jack of Fables was fun and Matt is another one of those where anytime he wants to sneak back into the Fables world again, even for a brief visit, hes more than welcome.
AD: Speaking of Jack of Fables, is there a chance that well see a Babe the blue ox comic?
BW: Yes. There is a chance. Matt and I have been determined to do one for some time now and its just a scheduling thing. Im not going to be able to work on it before FablesCon. Right now Im eking out my issues of Fables and FablesCon is the sum total of my life but after that, I expect some of that long range stuff that weve been intending to do all along will finally get done.
AD: I feel like have a list of things to ask you that other people have asked me to bring up with you.
BW: By all means.
AD: Whats the status of the Fables video game?
BW: The Fables Video Game. I got roundly poo-pooed in public for calling it a computer game rather than a video game. Apparently we dont call them computer games anymore. But yes the Fables video game is the next big project coming out of Telltale Games which has just wowed the gaming world with their Walking Dead game and as a matter of fact we probably would have seen at least one of the chapters of the Fables video game by now except for the Walking Dead was so successful for them theyve had all those magical worker types who are able to create video games working on that still instead of switching over when they were going to. This is good news because I think if the longer they have a big mega-hit with Walking Dead the better Fables will debut when it does.
The part of me that likes side events and such things to remain true to the main story is equally as happy because these people really really know their stuff where Fables is concerned. They didnt just glam onto the fact that this is popular so lets grind something out. They hired me on as I forget what the title is, some kind of associate producer basically just to backstop them and make sure that they dont get things wrong. I feel that Ive not earned my pay with this project because they get so many things so right. They have the characters down. Its a joy to read. The story is going to be complex and wonderful. Theres going to fights, theres going to be investigations, theres going to be mystery. Theres romance gone wrong and maybe even romance gone right by the end of it; well see. They really just know the characters frontwards and backwards. Im not a big gamer. Im trying to actually teach myself to play video games just enough so I can eke my way through it when it does start coming out but so far its wonderful. Im as tickled as can be with it. Although I wish I was more help. I wish there was some calamitous thing that they got so wrong so I could say, oh no. You clearly missed this and this is what the characters would actually do under those circumstances. Theres been some tweaking but no major surgery involved. Anyway have I answered your question?
AD: Well, I know you cant say much.
BW: I tried to answer at length without giving away a single thing of substance. I hope I succeeded. [laughs]
AD: I was at New York Comic Con where someone asked if you could play Bigby in the game and your reply was, I cant answer but how cool would it be if you could.
BW: We will hold to that answer.
AD: Will we ever see you write and draw a comic again?
BW: Maybe. Im slow drawing but I havent stopped entirely. Little bits here and there. Knock wood, I have one longer work left in me. But if its the case, its going to be glacial in its production so be patient.
AD: Im sure that youre working on a novel or two right now. Can you talk about what youre working on?
BW: The one Im just starting now is the sequel to Down the Mysterly River. I cannot tell you the title only because it gives away too much, which is why Im considering changing it simply because just having it on the shelves like that might give away too much. In any case, its the sequel to my childrens book Down the Mysterly River and it takes up right where the previous book left off. The novel I just handed in is unrelated to that series and its not a Fables novel; its its own thing. It is about the bastard son of Queen Mab of Fairy and True Thomas of Earth who had a dalliance in the land of fairy for a while and their son grew up to be a bastard in every sense of the word. Not a pleasant fellow at all. Its about what terrible thing he did to get himself kicked out of the realms of fairy so hes been hanging out in our world for the last eight hundred years and what hes been up to and what he has to rise up to the challenge when a bunch of dire stuff happens in our modern day.
AD: You wrote an earlier version of Down the Mysterly River in the late nineties and around the same time you wrote a couple short novels about Beowulf. Have you given any thought to doing something with those stories and that character?
BW: Yes, as a matter of fact. Kenmy agentwants me to put the two novellas together along with a number of short stories that I did with the same character and the same setting to get a novel sized book out of it. We may do that. Ill have to revisit them and see if Im still enamored enough. The good news is I have a very few of the Beowulf books that I self-published. I am going to bring those to FablesCon so that those people who have been looking for these for forever have at least one legitimate chance to get ahold of them. This will only be available at FablesCon and then maybe years down the road in some kind of collected edition. But if you dont want to wait years, this is your only chance to get them. Not that I just planted a big commercial for our convention right in the middle of our talk.
AD: I wanted to ask about two older projects because youve been working as a writer and artist for many years. You started working as an artist at TSR back in the eighties.
BW: TSR was an odd year for me. I spent only one year in their art department. This was just after getting out of the army and I considered myself a pretty good artist. Looking back I see that I was being very kind to myself. But the quality of artwork at TSR was not stellar at the time. It has gotten very professional since, but at the time someone like me could get a job in their art department. But I was pretty certain that I was not prepared for a job as a professional artist. Partly due to the fact that when I got out of the army, I thought I had the job. The art director sent me a letter that sort of half offered it to me but didnt quite say, you got the job, get over here. When I got there, it turned out it was between me and one other fellow. We had to compete for this and as part of that process the art director was asking me things like do you know how to do keylining, do you know how to do four color work, do you know how to do this and that and all these technical terms. The other poor fellow who was up for this job was honest and said he didnt but he could learn. I was dishonest and said I did. I had no idea what it was. Partly because of our samples and partly because of my lying like a fiend, I got the job and this other fellow didnt. I felt guilty about that for years.
This is more of a confession than anything else. But I got the job and then for the first couple weeks I stayed late at work every single night and got a reputation of gung-ho good worker type but it wasnt really for that reason. I continued working because I said I would, but the main reason was so I could break into the art directors office every night. He had a lock on his door but it was an easy one to jimmy. I mean having come out of three years in the MPs, this lock was easy to get through. So I broke in every night and searched his office as to what all these terms were that he quizzed me on so that I could try to fake my way through it if it ever came up. I found out that four color work was just a fancy name for painting in full color but I did not know then that all things were separated into four basic colors for printing. I finally saw a separation and opened up the different layers and realized, oh, four colors. So I taught myself all the things that I had lied and said I knew how to do with this little bit of after-work larceny every night. They were fine people. They were great artists to work with. I learned a lot. I thought I was ready to do comic books and just learning some of the basics of producing reproduceable art in the TSR art department helped me a lot towards getting my first comics work. With the proviso that I still wince at some of the terrible artwork I produced at that time, I have very good feelings of that year.
AD: You went on to write and draw a lot of your worn work like Elementals and you drew a Green Lantern story for DC that Alan Moore wrote back before he was Alan Moore.
BW: He was pretty extraordinary and known to be such then. It was kind of intimidating to do. Id like to go back and re-do that one just to do it a little better.
AD: In Darkest Night was a fascinating story.
BW: It was a terrific story. And I absorbed some of his script writing techniques in the sense that he would produce. [The comic] was eight-nine pages long but the script he produced had to have been two dozen pages long. This was single-spaced, typed. The thing is he doesnt do short, brief descriptions. The opening lines of that particular script was some stream of consciousness thing like: okay Im sitting in the good chair, Ive got my ciggies and coffee on hand and a fresh ribbon in the typewriter and Im ready to go. Hes writing all this. Its literally in the script. It wasnt until the second page where we actually got to any information as far as page one, panel one. I was delighted by this. I think Ive absorbed too much of that as I do tend to get a little chatty and wordy in some of my scripts.
AD: Thinking of the script as more of a conversation with the artist
BW: It is. It is exactly that. A script is two things. Theres the stuff thats going to be published, the dialogue, the captions, if there are any, the thought balloons, if there are any of those, but the rest of it is this letter youre writing to the artist. This is what were going to draw, this is what needs to be in this panel that type of thing. Its a marriage of poetry and technical writing wherein you have to write your dialogue as realistic and delightful as possible but for the instructions to the artist you need clarity above all else. It does not have to be poetic but it certainly has to be understandable. So you really are this schizophrenic writer, this Jekyll and Hyde, the difference being you have to be able to switch back and forth at will and not have one of the personalities attempt to kill and eat the other.
AD: I like that.
BW: Well, thank you.
AD: To return to FablesCon, you have a great guest list and Im sure youll have some fun programming in store for people.
BW: We are going to try to get some of the guests who would not normally share a stage with each other on the stage with each other to see what interesting stuff happens as a result. What I want out of FablesCon is that every fan, every reader who attends this come away from it feeling this was money well spent. The time and travel they had to do to get here was worth it. And the way to do that is for one thing to have good and interesting guests and then give as many ways for the fans to interact with those good and interesting guests as possible. So were going to make this a very approachable convention meaning that weve set up ways for each guest to be available for questions on the large stage or in intimate settings and everything in between. Were going to have some fun with the panels. Were not doing panels about shopping lists. Were not doing the panels that have unfortunately taken over much of comics cons these days which is this is the one hour panel about this publisher listing all of its books and trying to get you to buy them.
Im all for those capitalistic tendencies. Thats how we get stories out. We should try to get people to buy the books we produce. But comics conventions also used to be about the art and the science and the philosophy and the unreasonable demands of doing comics and talking about that. I miss that and so were going to bring that back in a big way. Were going to have lots of content about the theory and practice of doing comics. Wee going to have some fun stuff. We have one show just devoted to we call it the talk show room. Its going to be panels but its going to be in talk show format with a host and a desk. Were going to have guests come in and sit on the couch, were going to have a potted plant and just give some the guests a one hour talk show. Hopefully well even get cheesy music for that room too to introduce each show. And were going to have a bar. Every comic convention has the one bar where the guests tend to hang out. We formalized that. We opened a bar specifically so that its only our place only people that are guests or people attending the convention can go to where you can sit around and talk with these people in a more convivial setting without the microphones and panel stages separating you.
AD: This is a convention as you would like it to be.
BW: Just like every cop whos ever existed has always planned the perfect crimethinking, if I was that guy I wouldnt have confessed because we had nothing on him and that type of thingI think every comics creator has their own secret idea of, if I was to ever be silly enough to do my own convention heres what I would do. To a certain extent FablesCon reflects my perfect imagined convention. Now putting on a convention I found out is so much more work than one would think. There are compromises to be made and there are budgets that have to be adhered to so its not exactly the perfect convention. In the perfect convention, everyone I invite says yes. Every person who shows up is delighted to get there and be there. We have an unlimited budget. Unfortunately that doesnt actually exist in the real world.
AD: Just to wrap things up, I think its fair to say that youre bigger now than youve ever been.
BW: Yeah but Im trying to cut down and hit the treadmill. Ba dum dum.
AD: But seriously, youve made a lot of comics over the years and then in the past decade, youve become an overnight sensation.
BW: Well for one thing, I dont trust it. People are very kind and willing to say, oh, youve made it, Fables is wonderful, its a hit. I have seen the ups and downs of this industry long enough to know the transient nature of everything. I dont celebrate the success that much because I know it is just a blip in time. That said, I do enjoy this. I do enjoy that Fables seems to be finding readers. If you want to tell stories for a living, the one thing you want is an audience that is willing to let you command their attention for a while and not feel cheated afterwards. Thats pretty nice. I have to tell you, its pretty enjoyable. I just dont expect it to last. Elementals was kind of a hit when that first came out and then it went away along with the company that produced it. I thought, well, that was it. That was my shot and I had a good run and now Ill be one of those guys just hanging around the comics industry that just does a little work here and there, but it turns out there was a second chapter to be told. So well see. But the impulse to tell stories is not going to go away regardless. Thats there regardless of how big the audience is thats paying attention.
AD: Bill, thanks so much for taking the time.
BW: Well, thank you. And those of you out there that read Fables, thank you. And those that dont, perhaps youll consider.
AD: And I hope you dont have snow that weekend.
BW: I kinda hope we will. Were good at traveling though it and I want people that come here to have the full vigorous Minnesota experience. Plus I want the locals around here to have one more excuse to come in out of the cold and drop in at this fun funny books celebration.
Fables, which explores what happened when characters from fairy tales escape their worlds to find refugee in ours has changed over the years, but its still an action-packed character study where no one and nothing is safe. Last year a new spin-off series Fairest was launched, which like Fables comes out monthly from Vertigo Comics. Willingham is also overseeing FablesCon, which takes place in Rochester, Minnesota March 22-24, a convention celebrating Fables and mythic fiction, which features a great lineup of creators and a talent contest for a new Fables artist, but he took time out to talk with us about his many projects.
ALEX DUEBEN: Bill, thanks for talking with us. I know this is a busy time between work and planning for FablesCon.
BILL WILLINGHAM: This is the last big month before FablesCon in which every single thing that can possibly go wrong is scheduled to go wrong, so well see how that works out.
AD: At least youve scheduled for that.
BW: Ive seen other people run conventions and they have to know its coming. They have to know that the sky will be falling, so why not allow for it?
AD: Why dont we start there. March 22-24 youre holding FablesCon, which celebrates mythic fiction. Talk a little about what mythic fiction is and what the convention is.
BW: In the search for a title to describe what I had in mind about these kinds of books, Kurt Busiek came up with mythic fiction, which I think is as good a title as one can hope for. First of all, what its not: Its not crime noir, its not war stories, its not superheroes, its not really high fantasy, although it could be, and its not science fiction, although it could be. Its Fables and Sandman and so much that has come before. I think Cerebus from a long time ago would have fallen into that category. Its talking animals and mice with swords. Its literary characters having new adventures especially when literary characters cross into other books and worlds. I think all of that qualifies as a part of the mythic fiction realm. Fables, fairy tales, folklore, legends, mythology are good playgrounds in which mythic fiction does well.
AD: The convention has a great guest list, much of the Fables team in addition to lots of other people.
BW: We didnt want to make it just a Fables convention, although theres been some movement to have something like that, but a convention about these types of books. Not only the ones Im involved with but the ones I love reading. And the guest list shows that. Were small. This is our first year, so we could not have the totally exhaustive guest list that we might have liked but I think weve done pretty good. And were going to have lots of interesting conversations about the types of books we love.
AD: And you brought all these people to Minnesota in March, which Im sure is not the easiest sell.
BW: Its not an easy sell, but Im happily surprised. We did better than some might have predicted. March in Minnesota can still be winter. This weekend were scheduled to get some more snow. I hope the city is festooned with snow when we do this because we do well transporting people through snow. Were expert at it. Also between the hotel and the convention center, there are skyways and underground ways, the whole Mayo Convention Center complex has hidden and not so hidden ways so you can do this convention and never have to leave the warm confines of the inside if you choose to do so. What better way to have a winter convention than one where youre out of the elements.
AD: I want to talk about Fables, but the most recent trade just came out so I dont want to spoil anything if people havent picked it up yet. The title, though, Cubs in Toyland, sounds like such a nice sweet G-rated story, but its really not.
BW: Which was the whole point. We went, what is the happiest title we could possibly have in Fables? Anything in Toyland just sounds happy on the face of it, so to go against that we decided well then under that rubric lets have the most dire story we can think of and we did. I think we succeeded quite well in coming up with a perfectly terriblenot terrible in terms of badly done but in terms of consequence and importstory for these kids that ended up going to Toyland. Im pretty happy with the outcome, although thismore than any other storyright up until that last moment of the next to last issue, we asked ourselves, do we dare do this? Apparently we did.
AD: Not to give anything away to those who havent read it, but it was possibly the most intense and dire arc of Fables, which says something.
BW: Well I dont want readers to be un-moved. I can handle readers being mad at me; thats happened before. I can handle readers loving what weve done; thats happened from time to time and Im very grateful for it. But the one thing I cannot abide is reader indifference. Not leaving the readers moved in any way at the end of it is an absolute crime. Now if you can bring hilarious comedy every time and leave the readers moved and emotionally engaged, great, but comedys hard. Tragedy is not much easier, but everyone knows how to do tragedy. Everyone knows what would be tragic in their own lives. So we went that route.
AD: In those issues of the monthly series, there were Oz backups stories, which were drawn by Shawn McManus. I wasnt expecting you to tackle Oz because I dont think of them as being public domain.
BW: It doesnt seem like Oz should be public domain, should it? And yet they are. Thats why we were able to use Oz. I knew for a fact that Cubs in Toyland was going to be this really grim story so we wanted something lighthearted to kind of cleanse the palate between servings of this barbed wire and razor blades that were dishing up to people. So Bufkin the silly monkey and Oz seemed the perfect way to do that. Even though that got a little bit dark here and there but in comparison to Toyland, not at all.
AD: Just before Christmas you published the graphic novel Werewolves of the Heartland, which was a great story and set in Iowa. You dont find many comics set on the great plains.
BW: No. I had the title Werewolves of the Heartland for a while. I just liked the way it sounded. While I was pondering doing that book, I was moving from Las Vegas, Nevada to Minnesota and I passed Story City, Iowa on the road and I couldnt not stop. I mean if you see a sign for something called Story City and youre in my business, youre going to stop. I had lunch there. It was this charming little town and thats when it gelled for me. If Werewolves of the Heartland was going to take place anywhere, it was going to take place in Story City. I took lots of pictures, looked up everything I could about Story City and set it there. I did not let anyone in Story City know that this was happening. I did not ask anyones permission. Im not sure how you would go about doing that: Look, Im going to substitute all you kind people with ravening werewolves and then mostly destroy the town. What do you think about that? We just went ahead and did. I have not since heard if anyone in Story City has noticed what I did. At some point when I have timeand thats a premium thing right nowbut at some point Im going to drive down there again, its a two-three hour drive, and strategically happen to forget copies here and there at the local diner and library and places like that. Story City, Iowa. Beautiful town. Everyone should go there. It is not actually populated with werewolves, but other than that, the book was entirely accurate.
AD: Well see if we can get a plaque in town: This building was destroyed by Bigby in Werewolves of the Heartland.
BW: If you take the Dashiell Hammett tour in San Francisco it ends up in the alley in which Brigid OShaughnessy shot Miles Archer and they have a plaque there. The city put a plaque in that very alley a brass plaque that says on this spot Brigid OShaughnessy shot Miles Archer and they dont explain it was in a book. They just say that Brigid OShaughnessy shot Miles Archer there. I love that. I would the crowning joy of my life would be to have some kind of location call out like that where its not explained. Its so much of San Francisco culture that I guess they just didnt feel the ned to explain it. Thats true immortality.
AD: That is pretty awesome. Last year you also launched Fairest, which is more of a showcase for other writers and artists where youre just popping in now and again. Is that how it was designed?
BW: Thats sort of official in the sense that between these longer arcs of five-six issues per guest writeralthough I guess the whole point of Fairest is to have different writers so you wouldnt really call them guests. In any case DC wants to be able to put my name on every collection so Im going to do a one issue story in between every one of the longer arcs just so that we can get away with that. I dont think its really getting away with something; its certainly a joy to do. But were going to do that so I keep my hand in that little corner of the vast Fables world from time to time.
AD: What other creators are working on the book in future arcs?
BW: The very next one were going to see is Sean Williams, who is a fellow from Hollywood. He ran a production company for many years and has finally washed his hands of Hollywood and hes doing a story set in the Indu which is the fairy tale Fables version of India and introducing a new fairest in that land from Indian legend. That is a six issue I believe. Following that we are probably the scheduling could go one way or another, but were probably having the return of Cinderella with Shawn McManus drawing and Marc Andreyko writing. He came up with this wonderful caper for Cinderella that the thing to do with Cinderella is to do stories that only she could be involved in and he came up with a wonderful one for that. At some point down the road we have Matt Sturges doing Maddie the Cat, the Fairest female sorcerer cat of all the female sorcerer cats of the world. She is in cat form now but she was Medea from Greek myth who the witch Sycorax from The Tempest was based upon so shes that witch as well. But now shes a cat and apparently a pretty attractive one. Well see whats up with her.
AD: Glad to hear that Matt is doing something for the book. I loved Jack of Fables that the two of you wrote together.
BW: Jack of Fables was fun and Matt is another one of those where anytime he wants to sneak back into the Fables world again, even for a brief visit, hes more than welcome.
AD: Speaking of Jack of Fables, is there a chance that well see a Babe the blue ox comic?
BW: Yes. There is a chance. Matt and I have been determined to do one for some time now and its just a scheduling thing. Im not going to be able to work on it before FablesCon. Right now Im eking out my issues of Fables and FablesCon is the sum total of my life but after that, I expect some of that long range stuff that weve been intending to do all along will finally get done.
AD: I feel like have a list of things to ask you that other people have asked me to bring up with you.
BW: By all means.
AD: Whats the status of the Fables video game?
BW: The Fables Video Game. I got roundly poo-pooed in public for calling it a computer game rather than a video game. Apparently we dont call them computer games anymore. But yes the Fables video game is the next big project coming out of Telltale Games which has just wowed the gaming world with their Walking Dead game and as a matter of fact we probably would have seen at least one of the chapters of the Fables video game by now except for the Walking Dead was so successful for them theyve had all those magical worker types who are able to create video games working on that still instead of switching over when they were going to. This is good news because I think if the longer they have a big mega-hit with Walking Dead the better Fables will debut when it does.
The part of me that likes side events and such things to remain true to the main story is equally as happy because these people really really know their stuff where Fables is concerned. They didnt just glam onto the fact that this is popular so lets grind something out. They hired me on as I forget what the title is, some kind of associate producer basically just to backstop them and make sure that they dont get things wrong. I feel that Ive not earned my pay with this project because they get so many things so right. They have the characters down. Its a joy to read. The story is going to be complex and wonderful. Theres going to fights, theres going to be investigations, theres going to be mystery. Theres romance gone wrong and maybe even romance gone right by the end of it; well see. They really just know the characters frontwards and backwards. Im not a big gamer. Im trying to actually teach myself to play video games just enough so I can eke my way through it when it does start coming out but so far its wonderful. Im as tickled as can be with it. Although I wish I was more help. I wish there was some calamitous thing that they got so wrong so I could say, oh no. You clearly missed this and this is what the characters would actually do under those circumstances. Theres been some tweaking but no major surgery involved. Anyway have I answered your question?
AD: Well, I know you cant say much.
BW: I tried to answer at length without giving away a single thing of substance. I hope I succeeded. [laughs]
AD: I was at New York Comic Con where someone asked if you could play Bigby in the game and your reply was, I cant answer but how cool would it be if you could.
BW: We will hold to that answer.
AD: Will we ever see you write and draw a comic again?
BW: Maybe. Im slow drawing but I havent stopped entirely. Little bits here and there. Knock wood, I have one longer work left in me. But if its the case, its going to be glacial in its production so be patient.
AD: Im sure that youre working on a novel or two right now. Can you talk about what youre working on?
BW: The one Im just starting now is the sequel to Down the Mysterly River. I cannot tell you the title only because it gives away too much, which is why Im considering changing it simply because just having it on the shelves like that might give away too much. In any case, its the sequel to my childrens book Down the Mysterly River and it takes up right where the previous book left off. The novel I just handed in is unrelated to that series and its not a Fables novel; its its own thing. It is about the bastard son of Queen Mab of Fairy and True Thomas of Earth who had a dalliance in the land of fairy for a while and their son grew up to be a bastard in every sense of the word. Not a pleasant fellow at all. Its about what terrible thing he did to get himself kicked out of the realms of fairy so hes been hanging out in our world for the last eight hundred years and what hes been up to and what he has to rise up to the challenge when a bunch of dire stuff happens in our modern day.
AD: You wrote an earlier version of Down the Mysterly River in the late nineties and around the same time you wrote a couple short novels about Beowulf. Have you given any thought to doing something with those stories and that character?
BW: Yes, as a matter of fact. Kenmy agentwants me to put the two novellas together along with a number of short stories that I did with the same character and the same setting to get a novel sized book out of it. We may do that. Ill have to revisit them and see if Im still enamored enough. The good news is I have a very few of the Beowulf books that I self-published. I am going to bring those to FablesCon so that those people who have been looking for these for forever have at least one legitimate chance to get ahold of them. This will only be available at FablesCon and then maybe years down the road in some kind of collected edition. But if you dont want to wait years, this is your only chance to get them. Not that I just planted a big commercial for our convention right in the middle of our talk.
AD: I wanted to ask about two older projects because youve been working as a writer and artist for many years. You started working as an artist at TSR back in the eighties.
BW: TSR was an odd year for me. I spent only one year in their art department. This was just after getting out of the army and I considered myself a pretty good artist. Looking back I see that I was being very kind to myself. But the quality of artwork at TSR was not stellar at the time. It has gotten very professional since, but at the time someone like me could get a job in their art department. But I was pretty certain that I was not prepared for a job as a professional artist. Partly due to the fact that when I got out of the army, I thought I had the job. The art director sent me a letter that sort of half offered it to me but didnt quite say, you got the job, get over here. When I got there, it turned out it was between me and one other fellow. We had to compete for this and as part of that process the art director was asking me things like do you know how to do keylining, do you know how to do four color work, do you know how to do this and that and all these technical terms. The other poor fellow who was up for this job was honest and said he didnt but he could learn. I was dishonest and said I did. I had no idea what it was. Partly because of our samples and partly because of my lying like a fiend, I got the job and this other fellow didnt. I felt guilty about that for years.
This is more of a confession than anything else. But I got the job and then for the first couple weeks I stayed late at work every single night and got a reputation of gung-ho good worker type but it wasnt really for that reason. I continued working because I said I would, but the main reason was so I could break into the art directors office every night. He had a lock on his door but it was an easy one to jimmy. I mean having come out of three years in the MPs, this lock was easy to get through. So I broke in every night and searched his office as to what all these terms were that he quizzed me on so that I could try to fake my way through it if it ever came up. I found out that four color work was just a fancy name for painting in full color but I did not know then that all things were separated into four basic colors for printing. I finally saw a separation and opened up the different layers and realized, oh, four colors. So I taught myself all the things that I had lied and said I knew how to do with this little bit of after-work larceny every night. They were fine people. They were great artists to work with. I learned a lot. I thought I was ready to do comic books and just learning some of the basics of producing reproduceable art in the TSR art department helped me a lot towards getting my first comics work. With the proviso that I still wince at some of the terrible artwork I produced at that time, I have very good feelings of that year.
AD: You went on to write and draw a lot of your worn work like Elementals and you drew a Green Lantern story for DC that Alan Moore wrote back before he was Alan Moore.
BW: He was pretty extraordinary and known to be such then. It was kind of intimidating to do. Id like to go back and re-do that one just to do it a little better.
AD: In Darkest Night was a fascinating story.
BW: It was a terrific story. And I absorbed some of his script writing techniques in the sense that he would produce. [The comic] was eight-nine pages long but the script he produced had to have been two dozen pages long. This was single-spaced, typed. The thing is he doesnt do short, brief descriptions. The opening lines of that particular script was some stream of consciousness thing like: okay Im sitting in the good chair, Ive got my ciggies and coffee on hand and a fresh ribbon in the typewriter and Im ready to go. Hes writing all this. Its literally in the script. It wasnt until the second page where we actually got to any information as far as page one, panel one. I was delighted by this. I think Ive absorbed too much of that as I do tend to get a little chatty and wordy in some of my scripts.
AD: Thinking of the script as more of a conversation with the artist
BW: It is. It is exactly that. A script is two things. Theres the stuff thats going to be published, the dialogue, the captions, if there are any, the thought balloons, if there are any of those, but the rest of it is this letter youre writing to the artist. This is what were going to draw, this is what needs to be in this panel that type of thing. Its a marriage of poetry and technical writing wherein you have to write your dialogue as realistic and delightful as possible but for the instructions to the artist you need clarity above all else. It does not have to be poetic but it certainly has to be understandable. So you really are this schizophrenic writer, this Jekyll and Hyde, the difference being you have to be able to switch back and forth at will and not have one of the personalities attempt to kill and eat the other.
AD: I like that.
BW: Well, thank you.
AD: To return to FablesCon, you have a great guest list and Im sure youll have some fun programming in store for people.
BW: We are going to try to get some of the guests who would not normally share a stage with each other on the stage with each other to see what interesting stuff happens as a result. What I want out of FablesCon is that every fan, every reader who attends this come away from it feeling this was money well spent. The time and travel they had to do to get here was worth it. And the way to do that is for one thing to have good and interesting guests and then give as many ways for the fans to interact with those good and interesting guests as possible. So were going to make this a very approachable convention meaning that weve set up ways for each guest to be available for questions on the large stage or in intimate settings and everything in between. Were going to have some fun with the panels. Were not doing panels about shopping lists. Were not doing the panels that have unfortunately taken over much of comics cons these days which is this is the one hour panel about this publisher listing all of its books and trying to get you to buy them.
Im all for those capitalistic tendencies. Thats how we get stories out. We should try to get people to buy the books we produce. But comics conventions also used to be about the art and the science and the philosophy and the unreasonable demands of doing comics and talking about that. I miss that and so were going to bring that back in a big way. Were going to have lots of content about the theory and practice of doing comics. Wee going to have some fun stuff. We have one show just devoted to we call it the talk show room. Its going to be panels but its going to be in talk show format with a host and a desk. Were going to have guests come in and sit on the couch, were going to have a potted plant and just give some the guests a one hour talk show. Hopefully well even get cheesy music for that room too to introduce each show. And were going to have a bar. Every comic convention has the one bar where the guests tend to hang out. We formalized that. We opened a bar specifically so that its only our place only people that are guests or people attending the convention can go to where you can sit around and talk with these people in a more convivial setting without the microphones and panel stages separating you.
AD: This is a convention as you would like it to be.
BW: Just like every cop whos ever existed has always planned the perfect crimethinking, if I was that guy I wouldnt have confessed because we had nothing on him and that type of thingI think every comics creator has their own secret idea of, if I was to ever be silly enough to do my own convention heres what I would do. To a certain extent FablesCon reflects my perfect imagined convention. Now putting on a convention I found out is so much more work than one would think. There are compromises to be made and there are budgets that have to be adhered to so its not exactly the perfect convention. In the perfect convention, everyone I invite says yes. Every person who shows up is delighted to get there and be there. We have an unlimited budget. Unfortunately that doesnt actually exist in the real world.
AD: Just to wrap things up, I think its fair to say that youre bigger now than youve ever been.
BW: Yeah but Im trying to cut down and hit the treadmill. Ba dum dum.
AD: But seriously, youve made a lot of comics over the years and then in the past decade, youve become an overnight sensation.
BW: Well for one thing, I dont trust it. People are very kind and willing to say, oh, youve made it, Fables is wonderful, its a hit. I have seen the ups and downs of this industry long enough to know the transient nature of everything. I dont celebrate the success that much because I know it is just a blip in time. That said, I do enjoy this. I do enjoy that Fables seems to be finding readers. If you want to tell stories for a living, the one thing you want is an audience that is willing to let you command their attention for a while and not feel cheated afterwards. Thats pretty nice. I have to tell you, its pretty enjoyable. I just dont expect it to last. Elementals was kind of a hit when that first came out and then it went away along with the company that produced it. I thought, well, that was it. That was my shot and I had a good run and now Ill be one of those guys just hanging around the comics industry that just does a little work here and there, but it turns out there was a second chapter to be told. So well see. But the impulse to tell stories is not going to go away regardless. Thats there regardless of how big the audience is thats paying attention.
AD: Bill, thanks so much for taking the time.
BW: Well, thank you. And those of you out there that read Fables, thank you. And those that dont, perhaps youll consider.
AD: And I hope you dont have snow that weekend.
BW: I kinda hope we will. Were good at traveling though it and I want people that come here to have the full vigorous Minnesota experience. Plus I want the locals around here to have one more excuse to come in out of the cold and drop in at this fun funny books celebration.